My fictionalized Ancient China will be four or five states in contention, each warring for its own reasons under the orders of a unique commander. I will command one country's forces and the others will be handled by "AI Generals" I'll describe in the next post.

All of the commanders will exert their greatest influence during the deployment of groups of units and decoys on the Local Campaign Ladder as described in the Rally Round the King Historical Sampler. To create more solo gaming tension for myself, I've randomized the Ladder set-up process as follows:

Time LineRoll 1d6 and add 4 to the result. The final value is the number of rows in the Ladder. Each row will represent a week in game time.

Theater of WarRoll 3d6. Re-roll until all three dice show a different number. Compare the results to the Battlefields List (which will be the list of 6 pre-designed battlefields I'm going to create during June).These are the headings for each column in the Ladder. Arrange them from left to right in ascending numerical order (there will be geographical reasons for this).

Value IncreasesAdd +1 notations to a number of random boxes in the Ladder that correspond to the number of weeks in the Time Line.

5 Weeks = three +1's

6, 7 Weeks = four +1's

8, 9 Weeks = five +1's

10 Weeks = six +1's

Use a d20 or d30(!) to determine +1 placement on the Ladder with no box receiving more than one +1.